On June 9-10, the advisory group for the formation of the future Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) met at the Foundation's offices in San Francisco. Community volunteers, Wikimedia Trustees, chapter representatives, Foundation staff and members of the Bridgespan Group discussed how the FDC will guide the decisions about the distribution of money (over 10 million US dollars in 2012-13) among the Foundation, chapters and other groups. Based on the resulting recommendations, the Board of Trustees has since approved the charter and initial operation of the FDC. Wikimedians who wish to serve on the FDC are invited to nominate themselves.

A new prototype of the "visual editor" for Wikimedia projects was launched, the first release that can create and edit pages. It will enable users to contribute without having to learn complicated wikitext syntax.

The Teahouse, where new Wikipedia editors can receive support from experienced community members, concluded its three month pilot phase on the English Wikipedia, publishing a report and metrics. 568 volunteers participated in the pilot. In a survey, 70% said that they were satisfied with their Teahouse experience, while only 5% were not satisfied. New editors who are invited to the Teahouse made many more edits afterwards than those who do not receive an invitation. 28 percent of Teahouse participants are women, compared to 9 percent of editors on Wikipedia in general.

Over 100 participants from 30 countries came to Berlin for the Berlin Hackathon, co-organized by Wikimedia Deutschland and the Foundation. They included MediaWiki developers, Toolserver users, systems administrators, bot writers and maintainers, Gadget creators, and other Wikimedia technologists. The community also learned more about the Wikidata and RENDER projects.

Also, regarding data dumps, media downloads per project are now live, along with one or two "incremental" downloads per month. We're looking for more mirror sites for media, dumps or pageview stats; send us ideas!

And the Ops team has identified a new San Francisco colocation to be the new West Coast caching center. Work on building up the infrastructure is planned to begin this coming August/September. With this caching center, we will be able to improve users' site experience for the North American West Coast and Asia Pacific.

The team did the first deployment of VisualEditor and Parsoid, with an early version now live in a test namespace on mediawiki.org. This editor is broadly feature-compatible with the old code which this replaces, while being the first release that can create and edit pages. The team is now planning to deploy new code to mediawiki.org as it develops every two weeks or so.

We deployed an updated version of the New Pages Feed (formerly called Page Triage) on the English Wikipedia. This new tool provides an enhanced list of pages for review by community patrollers. The team also deployed the first version of a new curation toolbar to appear on article pages, enabling patrollers to get more article info, mark pages as reviewed, or tag them. You can check out the current prototype on the English Wikipedia, as well as the latest version on Wikimedia Labs.

With the engineering community team, features engineers also worked on scripts, gadgets, templates, and other tools to make it easier to document and report their work.

We've been making significant progress recently to secure the necessary partnerships that will make it possible to provide Wikipedia over SMS. Also, we've been conducting Wikipedia Zero tests with Orange in six different countries, and are testing and refining with partners in Bangladesh and Montenegro.

We launched the Fellowship News, a monthly digest containing updates on each fellowship project.

Teahouse Project (see also "Highlights" section) - Both the pilot project report and metrics report are now complete. Based on pilot learnings and community feedback, we’ve developed a plan for phase 2 of the project, which will run through October. The project team and community volunteers are beginning work on this phase with a focus on building scalability and long-term sustainability into the Teahouse, and continuing to demonstrate the project’s impact on new editor engagement and retention.

Help Project - Peter launched a survey to better understand how new and experienced editors currently use Wikipedia’s help documentation, and preliminary results are being compiled. Scripts are complete for the first in-person usability tests of key help pages, which are scheduled to begin in early July. More project updates are available in the Help Project Newsletter.

Dispute Resolution Project - Steven has collated his survey results and an analysis of dispute resolution forum activity metrics is in progress. The full survey report will be released soon, meanwhile a monthly update containing preliminary findings is now available.

Small Wiki Editor Engagement Project - Tanvir has been leading discussions with the Bangla community to identify barriers and opportunities for on-wiki strategies that can be done to encourage more new editors on Bangla Wikipedia. Input is now being collected from readers in order to help prioritize experiments and plan tactics aimed at encouraging more would-be and new editors.

The contribution portal has been launched on Arabic Wikipedia, banners are running to drive logged-in users to the portal page which contains 6 visual tutorials, and baseline metrics are now being collected. Experimental changes are planned for each coming week.

Released catalyst program planning page to open debate with community members

Discussions took place on Meta, IRC and in person

Engaged and interacted with people I (Oona) hadn't met yet

Published a draft on the job position for community organizer (nobody commented on the page - which is a sign of both people not feeling comfortable to add ideas when it doesn't seem a draft and also not too controversial)

Education Program

Released open call for professors for the education program (worked with Everton on writing the call, contacting professors, preparing FAQ page, reviewing online form)

Professor in Argentina teaches with Wikipedia: A blog post recently published highlighted the work being done in Argentina by Professor Lila Pagola at the University of Villa Maria. Professor Pagola teaches a course on the history of photography for which she asks her students to contribute article to the Spanish Wikipedia on course-related topics. <http://www.ludost.org/content/wikimedia-education>

New Case Studies brochure released: Professors around the world share their experiences using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in a new brochure developed by the Wikimedia Foundation. "Case Studies: How professors are teaching with Wikipedia" has an online component to each feature, where interested professors can get more information about the assignment, including the professor's course page on wiki, syllabus, and assignment. Fifteen professors from six countries are featured in the brochure. <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Education_Program_Case_Studies.pdf>

Application process opens for U.S., Canada classes: New for fall 2012, professors from the United States and Canada interested in participating in the Wikipedia Education Program will need to apply to join the program. With increasing demand for support from Ambassadors, we need to prioritize classes that are contributing the most content – words or illustrations – to Wikipedia articles, so we've created an application process designed to better pair professors with Ambassadors. <http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/US-Canada/Join>

Canadian professor writes of her experience: University of British Columbia Professor Tina Loo published a blog post on the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE) site about why she was happy to use Wikipedia in her classroom last term. Professor Loo's students wrote on North American environmental history topics, and she found the assignment to be well worth her efforts. <http://niche-canada.org/node/10397>

Cairo conference celebrates pilot successes: Wikimedia Foundation staff and Cairo Pilot professors, Ambassadors, and students are gathering at Ain Shams University in Cairo this week for a celebration of the initial successes of the pilot program. Students in seven classes at Ain Shams and Cairo University participated in the pilot program this term, contributing the equivalent of 372 pages of content to the Arabic Wikipedia, even with the political turmoil present the entire term. <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cairo_conference_agenda.pdf>

The following press coverage was supported in some manner or the other by India Program. (Typically, the team would support the community by helping draft a press release and then also help with media contacts wherever possible.)

Reached out to 5 Wikipedians (including contractor YuviPanda and former staff Ayush) for support with tools to do analysis of edits by new Wikipedians. User:Hoo man has created an analysis tool which we have started using for analysing the edits of new Wikipedians who joined Wikipedia from the Facebook groups in English and Odia.

Work in June continues to focus on a new editorial focus for the Wikimedia blog, aiming to increase participation from our contributor community, increase the amount of articles in non-English languages, and developing new story areas based on emerging trends and issues in our community.

The Wikimedia Shop (http://shop.wikimedia.org) was readied for a soft launch on English Wikipedia in June. The ultimate launch kicked off on July 2, based on a geo-location enabled extension that creates a Wikimedia/Wikipedia shop link on the WP navigation sidebar in the US and Canada only. As the platform expands we hope to make the shop more accessible and cost-effective for those outside of the US and Canada.

Communications was also working closely with the Wikimania 2012 team in DC on preparations for media activities in the U.S. capital. As of reporting time, dozens of mainstream media confirmed interest in attending.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations in the UK released a report in June that summarized their research and dialogs (with Wikipedians, and with support from Wikimedia UK) on the topic of COI (conflict of interest) editing of Wikipedia - specifically PR and marketing practicioners editing the site. The report's high-profile advice that PR pros not edit Wikipedia's public pages was widely covered by the English language press.

A working prototype of the visual editor was announced in a June 21 blog post, and resulted in a stream of mostly positive tone media stories. Jimmy Wales' tweet on the topic - calling the editor "epically important" - helped spread coverage even further.

Thirty-seven blog posts in total for June 2012. More posts featuring our global contributor community were published, as well as a focus on POTD/Y background. This month also saw an increase in bilingual posts.

Initiated annual performance review cycle for the organization, consisting initially of each member of the organization doing a self-assessment, receiving feedback from others that they've worked with, and then from their manager

Initiated online sexual harassment prevention training for all employees with direct reports, as mandated by California law. Deadline for completion is August 31, 2012.

Completed an initial study on what career development could look like at the Foundation, given the relatively flat hierarchial structure and desire to be non-corporate. Initial recommendations are being evaluated for implementation for the next 1-3 years.

Coordinated senior leadership team retreat with C-level staff to assess working relationships, team dynamics, and overall organizational leadership

Completed WMF culture survey to assess elements that support overall mission of WMF and elements that impede ability to execute

Completed executive compensation benchmarking survey for the board, using an external firm with which to make appropriate salary recommendations, and as a foundation for compensation philosophy for the organization. The impact on current salaries will be minimal, as we found that most salaries are within the expected range, given external benchmarks.

We have implemented the availabilty of using SEPA/IBAN in participating countries. Anyone receiving funding from the Wikimedia Foundation can request payments using SEPA/IBAN.

The Wikimedia Foundation has committed to leasing the 5th floor of 149 New Montgomery (the building we currently occupy) but do not plan to occupy the floor as it will not be available for occupancy for some time. This delay in occupancy will be at no cost to the Foundation and allows the Foundation to have the 5th floor available for future growth if needed.

David McDonald, Mark Zachry and Jonathan Morgan (visiting from University of Washington, presented at Dario's Brown Bag)

Edward J. Black (The Foundation for Innovation and Internet Freedom)

Jim LeMunyon (Computer and Communications Industry Association)

Randall Benson (consultant for culture study)

Kim Dodson (consultant for culture study)

Jim Anderson (Bill Adam’s colleague - Key Connections)

Kathi Fletcher (Shuttleworth Foundation)

Max Klein (Wikipedian volunteer for Education Program)

Matt Senate (Wikipedian volunteer for Education Program)

Derrick Coetzee (Wikipedian volunteer for Education Program)

Julie Chang (Apple)

The monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting on July 5, 2012 covered the 2012-13 Annual Plan instead of focusing on the month of June as usual. The video recording will be uploaded to Commons around the time of the publication of the Annual Plan.